January kicked off the year with a 4.3 percent drop in global business aircraft flight activity as the North American market declined by 5.5 percent year-over-year and Europe was down by 7.9 percent, according to aviation data research and safety specialist Argus International. Reporting on its monthly TraqPak data, Argus found traffic down not only from weaker demand but also from significant weather.
In North America last month, fractional operations continued to gain steam, up 9.4 percent year-over-year. But that marked the only gain in the continent in January, with Part 91 activity down by 6.7 percent and Part 135 off by 9.8 percent from the same month a year ago.
Meanwhile, operations dropped for all aircraft categories, with midsize-cabin activity posting the smallest decrease of 1.8 percent. Turboprop operations posted the largest slide, down 9.6 percent, followed by large cabins at a 5.3 percent decline and small cabins down 5.2 percent.
However, fractional operation small-cabin aircraft jumped 14.7 percent in January.
A 17 percent decrease in turboprop operations and a 9.1 percent drop in large-cabin activity pushed down operations in Europe overall. However, small and midsize activity appeared to stabilize, down by only 1.6 and 1.8 percent, respectively. The rest of the world remains up, by 7.7 percent despite a 7.8 percent year-over-year decline in large-cabin activity in January.
Despite the sustained declines, Argus expects a slight increase of 1.2 percent in North America and a smaller decrease of 2.7 percent in Europe in February year-over-year.
"We have seen a recent trend of activity missing expectations and January was no different,” said Travis Kuhn, senior v-p of software for Argus. “We observed a post-holiday slowdown, which we expected, but the winter weather impacts were a little stronger than anticipated for the month. We would expect February to be stronger with the Super Bowl and President's Day weekend, both of which are typically strong activity weekends."